Disputatio:Zombi
Lemma[fontem recensere]
I'm almost sure that "cadaver animatum" has arisen as a "noli fingere" breach by a hapax legomenon producing debutant some three years ago -- and voilà: that invention has spawned almost 600 googleable hits. Well, that's how I tend to see and tell the story, but maybe I'm wrong. But if I'm right, this is one more example of how quickly pieces of good and bad info spreads in the net. I'm not saying that "cadaver animatum" is bad Latin, but mythinks it'd be more felicitous to use it as a definiens of the loan word zombi. As a living language -- anyway, we are much more alive than most of the languages figuring in wiki -- Latin is fully entitled to adopt loans. --Neander 13:51, 3 Maii 2010 (UTC)
- ¡Qué poder! Nevertheless: (1) borrowings, as you say, are OK; and (2) as a synonym, would something like mortuus animatus 'a living corpse'—or, more memorable because more shocking, mortuus vivus—just as well (as my great-aunt used to say) hit the spot? IacobusAmor 14:03, 3 Maii 2010 (UTC)
- I agree about the suggested move; moreover, animated. But how to spell it? Creole zonbi, French zombi(e)", or English zombie? Lesgles (disputatio) 05:02, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
- Merriam-Webster has two lemmata: "zombie also zombi," and it has the lemma zombiism [not zombieism] ("the beliefs and practices of the cult of the zombi" [N.B. not zombie]). So that's two major languages that accept zombi. ¶ Note that for a figurative use ("a person held to resemble the so-called walking dead"), Merriam-Webster suggests automaton. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:24, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
- Zombi seems a good compromise choice, then. (Creole is less commonly written, and zombi is probably as good as zonbi at representing the Creole spoken form.) As Neander said above, "cadaver animatum" may be a reasonable definition (for this use of animare cf. Ovid, Met. 4.619 etc.) -- we can't be blamed for trying to devise definitions -- but no need to create a Latin lemma when we can use the international word. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:43, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
- I went ahead and moved it. Eventually we will need an article on the general concept of the undead (mort-vivant, Untoter). Lesgles (disputatio) 20:15, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
- Zombi seems a good compromise choice, then. (Creole is less commonly written, and zombi is probably as good as zonbi at representing the Creole spoken form.) As Neander said above, "cadaver animatum" may be a reasonable definition (for this use of animare cf. Ovid, Met. 4.619 etc.) -- we can't be blamed for trying to devise definitions -- but no need to create a Latin lemma when we can use the international word. Andrew Dalby (disputatio) 12:43, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
- Merriam-Webster has two lemmata: "zombie also zombi," and it has the lemma zombiism [not zombieism] ("the beliefs and practices of the cult of the zombi" [N.B. not zombie]). So that's two major languages that accept zombi. ¶ Note that for a figurative use ("a person held to resemble the so-called walking dead"), Merriam-Webster suggests automaton. IacobusAmor (disputatio) 12:24, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
- I agree about the suggested move; moreover, animated. But how to spell it? Creole zonbi, French zombi(e)", or English zombie? Lesgles (disputatio) 05:02, 16 Septembris 2015 (UTC)
Fons latinum?[fontem recensere]
In the Lives of the Fathers of Mérida bishop Massona is referred to as biotenatus (cap. XII in the PL edition), which is given in the Liverpool translation by A. Fear as 'living corpse' (V.6.17; as per the Greek biothanatos). Would Biotenatus be a good lemma for 'zombie'?--Xaverius 08:20, 17 Maii 2018 (UTC)
- Probably not, I think. According to DuCange [1][2] and Lewis and Short [3] biothanatus is someone who dies a violent death, with the prefix originally being not bio- "life" but bia- "violence" (see also Liddell and Scott, βιοθάνατος, βιαιοθάνατος, and Lewis and Short, biaeothanatus). Lesgles (disputatio) 14:32, 17 Maii 2018 (UTC)